MIT researchers warn of 'PACMAN' M1 flaw that can't be patched

A new vulnerability is built into the chip but there's no way to know if the M2 fixes it yet.

- ROMAN LOYOLA

W While Apple's M1 processors have helped the Mac reach new performance heights, a few reports have exposed potential security issues with the celebrated system on a chip. The latest such report comes from MIT CSAIL (fave.co/3NzWDM5), where researchers have found a way to defeat what is called "the last line of security" on the M1 SoC.

MIT CSAIL found that the M1 implementation of pointer authentication(fave.co/3ufxGyO) can be overcome with a hardware attack that the researchers developed. Pointer authentication is a security feature that helps protect the CPU against an attacker that has gained memory access. Pointers store memory addresses, and pointer authentication code (PAC) checks for unexpected pointer changes caused by an attack. In its research, MIT CSAIL created "PACMAN," an attack that can find the correct value to successfully pass pointer authentication,so a hacker can continue with access to the computer.